Comments on: Small is disappointing

By: college dropout rates

college dropout rates — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:15:28 +0000

[...] Bill Gates and other education reformers, backers of small schools heralded the academies as the behttp://joannejacobs.com/2008/06/13/small-is-disappointing/Bringing Potential Dropouts Back From the Brink New York TimesA program in Yonkers aims to achieving [...]

By: Tommyboy35

Tommyboy35 — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 23:52:40 +0000

I’m so shocked. Once again liberalism fails whenever it is implemented. You would think that eventually people would stop believing liberals whenever they ask for money to solve a problem. Time and time again, however, you give them tons of money and you get what? The same, predictable, result. Failure…and a whole lot of wasted tax dollars. Really, should it take 25 million dollars to figure out that crappy teaching was the problem in the first place?

By: cj

cj — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 07:08:26 +0000

In summary: they had incompetent personnel who didn’t know what their job was.

Well, gee, I can’t imagine why they weren’t successful.

By: Catch Thirty-Thr33

Catch Thirty-Thr33 — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 11:41:44 +0000

“College ready” is a laudable, I suppose, but what about “life ready?” (As we all know that not all students want to go on to college…)

By: The GiveWell Blog - Exploring how to get real change for your dollar. » Understanding the achievement gap

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 23:28:21 +0000

[...] one can accomplish with “small schools” (a Gates-backed initiative that has produced disappointing results), private-school scholarships, etc. (The Murnane paper also references research on [...]

By: Bill

Bill — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 18:11:38 +0000

This reminds me of a visit to my high school at a class reunion a few years ago. The school enrollment is just about what it was when I was a student, the community demographics are very little changed, but they have become caught up in the “small is better” mantra.

When I was there, for some 2000 students, we had a principal, an assistant, six counselors and three secretaries. Now, organized into three “academies” and the same number of students, the administrative body count is up to sixty five.

Much of the first two floors of the original building are now housing administrative drones, and the taxpayers have been tapped to replace that classroom space.

At least it’s in a part of the country where they don’t do the California thing of spending little on maintenance and replacing the buildings every twenty years.

By: Russ

Russ — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:13:23 +0000

When will we begin to see that schools (no matter how good) cannot build on an insecure, unstable foundation now provided by society and home?
Yes, we teachers and schools need to continue to improve, but no amount of money and training can make up for what is not appropriately provided by the other meaningful components of the total picture we call education.
Until we begin to behave as though we believe that ALL of us (parents, schools, community, businesses, etc.) are responsible for educating our young people, we can test ourselves silly, throw money at various endeavors of schools, criticize teachers who don’t care, and still “miss the mark”.

By: Michael Umphrey

Michael Umphrey — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:10:14 +0000

After being a young, reform-minded principal and investing a lot of energy in restructuring plans and then watching what happened, I came to the conclusion years ago that nearly all educational discourse is a distraction from teaching and learning and seldom leads to improvement.

But the professional journals are full of talk about structures, policies, procedures, budgets, etc. etc.

What do kids need to learn and why? What are the best ways to teach it?

Talk about these things will lead to talk about the other stuff, but most talk about the other stuff seldom leads to or leaves room for talk about teaching and learning.

By: allen

allen — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:11:41 +0000

> Organizers now say they focused too much on school structure and not enough on improving teaching.

Sometimes you don’t know whether to laugh or cry.